“What the fuck is wrong with you? That’s your sister!” The shock of watching Gemma run from John’s office in tears left me full of rage. I grabbed a fist full of his tie and part of his shirt and shook as if I could shake sense into him.
He tried to push me away. I had mass and strength on my side.
“Get off me. You’re just as bad as she is.” He spit in my face.
I still didn’t budge.
“You don’t get it, do you? Is her pussy so good you can’t think straight?”
I breathed through my need to bury my fists in his face. I threw him away from me. He crashed over the chair he knocked over earlier. I took two long strides and adjusted my coat as I towered over him.
“You’ve treated her like dirt her entire life,” I snarled.
“And you were too nice to her when you should have ignored her. Look at what a mess that’s made.” John started to stand up. He brushed at his trousers. “She’s never been good for anything.”
I knocked him back on his ass. “What the fuck did she ever do to you?”
“Some friend you turned into. How could you forget? She killed my mother.”
I closed my eyes and turned away from him. He had been treating her like a murderer. As if she killed their mother on purpose. It made a sick and twisted kind of sense. “How the fuck can you still believe that? For fuck’s sake John your mother died in childbirth. You’re blaming Gemma for something she had no control over.”
“If she didn’t exist my mother would be here now!”
“You have no way of knowing that. Your mom could have been on the yacht with our fathers, and you could have lost her then. She could have gotten sick, there could have been a car accident.”
“And she could still be here. Instead, I’m stuck with Gemma, her bastard child, ha!” he laughed bitterly, “your bastard child, and that conniving woman my father married.”
“I can’t believe how fucking wrong you are. Have been for years. She’s your sister.” I knew John acted as if he did not like Gemma. I had always thought it was a combination of being tough for his friends paired with typical sibling rivalry. We were teenagers and young adults; we didn’t want some four or five-year-old hanging around while we made dick jokes and talked about getting laid. I never realized he hated her.
“Are you serious right now? Are you going to defend her after she tricked you into thinking she was someone else? Of course, you would. You’ve been fucking her. She’s probably done irreparable damage to CP Manhattan’s reputation with her internet shit. And don’t tell me you think marketing is doing a good job. They should stick to what they know.” He slowly got to his feet, moving like an old man.
“Postcards?” I asked. He couldn’t see past his own limiting beliefs of who his sister was or what this business needed to survive.
“Yeah, fucking postcards. You might be good with an accounts payable sheet, but you don’t know shit when it comes to running a business.” He rubbed his jaw like I had knocked him one. I hadn’t but I took that as a target location for when I did pop him one.
“You never wanted to run CP Manhattan. You’ve said it more than once. I think now is a good time for you to leave. If you don’t submit your resignation to the board—”
“Is that a threat? Do you honestly think I’m going to let you take our fathers’ business and run it headfirst into the ground?” I looked at the papers scattered about on the floor. “You went to a shit business school. You probably can’t even analyze the graphs she gave you. Your sister is a smart woman.”
“I went to a better school than you did, dickhead. She’s manipulative, Chase. Open your fucking eyes. She spread her legs for you, and you are acting like a starved puppy. The sex cannot be that good. She probably sucked your dick to get the job.”
“I doubt it. You weren’t the one who interviewed her,” I growled. “That explains how Jennifer got her job here.”
John crossed the office and the sucker punched me in the kidney. My knees buckled, and I started to go down. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw John pull back to punch me in the side of my head. I made sure his fist got nothing but air. I let my knees continue to fold and I followed them down, rolling through the fall and onto my feet in a continuous motion. Back on my feet, I managed to get out of my coat in time to push his arm out of the way as he swung for another punch. With a twist, I had his arms clamped between my ribs and my arms, pinning him.
He managed to pull free, and I elbowed him in the ribs and shoved him into the shelving lining the back wall of his office. He stumbled, knocked books from one shelf, and knocked another off its brackets, dumping its contents to the floor.
“You don’t know the last thing about running a business. You seem to think it’s all cocktails and banging the secretary. Your sexist ideals belong to television shows and outdated movies. They were outdated in our fathers’ time.” My breathing came heavy with the exertion of the fight. I wasn’t only fighting John; I was fighting years of pent-up frustration. I didn’t want to be CFO when I was twenty-eight. But damn if I didn’t try to do my best work. I wanted to continue my father’s legacy, make him proud as if he had been around these past ten years to see what had happened with his company. It seemed like John was doing his best to sully the Peters’ name.
“You just wish you had figured it out like me. What did you do Chase? Get jealous I was engaged, so you found the first slut who would sleep with you? And surprise it’s my deceitful little sister.” Every word against Gemma made my blood boil at a higher temperature.
“You’re delusional. You know what? You can have the fucking company, buy me out. I’ll sit back and watch as the whole thing falls apart.”
John scoffed. “You mean it becomes bigger, better. I’ve been carrying your dead weight for ten years.”
“Deadweight?” I laughed. “You don’t even know what the fuck is going on in the business right now, do you? Who is going to run things for you? Jennifer? You’re nothing but a figurehead and a devoted lap dog to some nagging gold digger.” I spit the words out. “She says jump and you ask how high.”
“And you’re just a dickhead. Pussy whipped by my fucking sister.”
That’s when my fist slammed into the side of his jaw.
His eyes went out of focus, and he staggered around finding his balance. He braced himself against his desk, sucking in heavy breaths.
“Get the fuck out of my office. Get out of my company.”
I grabbed my coat and left.
As I strode out of John’s office, I realized I should have done this moments ago. I shouldn’t have tried to make sense of what had happened. I should have followed Gemma. I was in love with her, and I knew with sudden clarity that I had to marry her. Amelia was my daughter. We belonged together.
“Which way did she go?” I barked.
John’s assistant pointed toward the elevators.
I went straight to Gemma’s office. She wasn’t there. I couldn’t tell if she had come back or not. I felt my chest constrict. I couldn’t lose her or Amelia.
“Have you seen her?” I asked, barging into Maggie’s office.
“I haven’t seen Gem since she went to Mr. Peter’s office.”
“Fuck.” I ran out of her office and out of the building.
The rain soaked my shirt before I managed to pull my overcoat on. I looked up and down the street without any idea of how to find her. I pulled out my phone and called her. It rang and ended up in voicemail. I called again to no avail.
Frantically I texted her. “Gemma, we need to talk. Where did you go?”
I paced back and forth in front of the building, hoping to catch her coming out. Praying she would answer her phone.
